Cru de Champlain's rich yellow paste, creamy and dense, is luscious and smooth on the tongue.Tim Fraser
Cheese maker Marie-Claude Harvey of Fromagerie F.X. Pichet wants to put Champlain, Que., on the map - with cheese. "Champlain is my place, we make the cheese at Champlain, it's the place where I'm from, it's my terroir." Her groundbreaking creation, Cru de Champlain, is not only delectable, handmade and organic, but it signifies an important milestone for cheese makers across the country. Cru de Champlain is the only soft, non-pasteurized cheese allowed to be sold in Canada before it is 60 days old. It is released to market after 30 to 40 days of aging.
Cru de Champlain is full, complex and well balanced. The rich yellow paste, creamy and dense, is luscious and smooth on the tongue. Your mouth is hit with salty, savoury flavours springing from a fresh milky base that has notes of sweetness and fragrant grass. It is a cheese that disrupts conversation with a round of "mmmmms."
Though it technically cannot be called a raw milk cheese, the milk for Cru de Champlain undergoes a gentler heating process (thermalization) than the high temperatures used to kill all bacteria (good and bad) during pasteurization. Thermalization destroys most of the potential bad bacteria but keeps some of the flavour from the beneficial microbes. Any remaining harmful bacteria die off during the aging process. Non-pasteurized cheeses are better able to showcase the quality and terroir of a farmer's milk.
In 2009, Quebec modified its laws to allow the sale of non-pasteurized cheese under 60 days, provided strict safeguards were met. When Ms. Harvey and her husband Michel Pichet (who runs the farm) heard that the law was to be changed, their goal was to take advantage of the new climate. It was not an easy process to meet the ACIA (Canadian Food Inspection Agency in Quebec) rules. "We had to make changes at the farm, we had to test and analyze the raw milk every month, and each time we introduced new cows into the milk rotation, each one had to pass inspection as well," Ms. Harvey says. But they did it. "I had the permit in my hands on Nov. 11, 2009. I was very happy to have it but …," she pauses dramatically, "there's a story."
Although she had a provincial permit to make 30-day-old, non-pasteurized cheese in Quebec, F.X. Pichet is licensed to sell cheese federally. Therefore, the national 60-day-minimum aging rules trumped her new provincial licence - even in Quebec. "I had a permit in my hands that I could not use. It was nonsense," Ms. Harvey says.
To make use of her Quebec permit, she had to prove to Health Canada, the ACIA and MAPAC (Ministère de l'Agriculture, des Pêcheries et de l'Alimentation du Québec) that her non-pasteurized cheese was safe. She showed them detailed test results and kept meticulous paperwork that backed up her assertions, also calling on the support of colleagues in Quebec's dairy industry.
"And then, like a gift for Christmas, we got the permission on Dec. 18, 2009," Ms. Harvey says. "The Minister of State [agriculture] Jean-Pierre Blackburn, called me himself and said, 'Go for it, you have permission.' " Ms. Harvey takes the responsibility seriously. "The first one has to be well documented and successful to open the door to other cheese makers in Quebec."
Her efforts have not gone unnoticed. She was honoured to join the ranks of the exclusive international association the Guilde Internationale des Fromagers. As she explains proudly, "I did something big in the milk world." As for her quest to make Champlain famous - well, this cheese a step in the right direction.
Sue Riedl studied at the Cordon Bleu in London.
Cheese: Cru de Champlain
Producer: Fromagerie F.X. Pichet
Origin: Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade, Que.
Owner: Marie-Claude Harvey and Michel Pichet
Cheese Maker: Marie-Claude Harvey
Milk: thermalized, organic, cow
Type: farmstead, soft, washed rind
Shape: 200-gram wheel
Distributor: Provincial Fine Foods and Fromages CDA Inc.
Availability (some stores may not have supply until the end of September):
Vancouver: Benton Brothers, Whole Foods Market, Choices Markets and Les Amis du Fromage
Saskatoon: Souleio Foods
Toronto: Thin Blue Line, Longo's, A Taste of Quebec, About Cheese, Cheese Boutique
Ottawa: Serious Cheese
Guelph: Ouderkirk & Taylor
Quebec: Loblaws, Metro, Sobeys, IGA
Montreal: Fromagerie Atwater, Fromagerie Hamel
Sue Riedl